Two and a half tons of natural uranium missing in the war-torn country of Libya has been traced.
The uranium containers were recovered barely 5 kilometers from where they were stored, General Khalid al-Mahjub, head of rebel commander Khalifa Haftar’s communications division, said on Thursday.
In his statement, al-Mahjoub also referred to the discovery of 10 missing barrels near the border with Chad.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog revealed on Thursday that two and a half tons of uranium had disappeared from a site in Libya, 10 drums of natural uranium declared by the former government to be no longer there.
Natural uranium cannot be immediately used for energy production or bomb fuel, AP News reports, because the enrichment process usually requires turning the metal into a gas, and It is then spun (centrifuged) in a special machine to bring it to the desired level.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement that Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi informed member states on Wednesday about the missing uranium.
The agency said in its statement that the lack of information on nuclear material could lead to radiological risks and nuclear security concerns, but required complex logistics to get there.
Experts say that if natural uranium is obtained through a group of technical means and resources, one ton of uranium can be refined over time to 5.6 kg of weapons-grade material, which is what experts say. For nuclear non-proliferation experts, the search for this missing metal is therefore an important issue.
It should be noted that in 2003, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya announced the abandonment of the nuclear weapons program.